


Curious

by LadyOfTheLake666



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who - Various Authors
Genre: Canon Compliant, Doctor Who References, Doctor Who Secret Santa, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gift Fic, Hugs, Light Angst, Memory Loss, Memory Related, Strangers, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27277486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOfTheLake666/pseuds/LadyOfTheLake666
Summary: The Ninth Doctor, shortly after his regeneration, bumps into a woman called Donna Noble, on a stroll through London.There’s a missed connection, some averted flirting and an unfinished business between the two, but not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor & Donna Noble, Ninth Doctor/Donna Noble, Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble, Tenth Doctor/Donna Noble, The Doctor/Donna Noble
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33
Collections: Missed Connections Exchange





	Curious

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hotchocolatedictator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchocolatedictator/gifts).



The sound of the universe whispered in Donna’s ears, a familiar susurration although she couldn’t exactly recall where she had heard it before. This happened to her quite often- she’d be slogging at her desk job and remember a meeting with Agatha Christie or running across crumbling terrain hand-in-hand with a stranger. Sometimes, the memories didn’t even make sense- like the time she was trapped inside a library and had started a family, except the library was _digital_ or a simulation.

And then there were the stars.

Usually, by that time, Donna’s head would start aching with the effort of remembering, so she’d distract herself with a mug of coffee or office gossip, and after a while, the sensations would vanish and she’d wonder why she’d even got so worked up.

Of course, she blamed it all on her nerves. So when the wind swished gently and the temperature dropped a few degrees and she wrapped her jacket tightly around herself (a vision of her in a wedding dress standing on a rooftop and an unknown man offering her his coat, flashed with a burning intensity before fading just as suddenly), she thought it just was the stress of planning a second wedding that was finally getting to her.

Until she bumped headlong into a tall man with dark hair, dressed in black.

“Oi, watch where you are going!”

The stranger did not apologize but regarded her as if struck.

He squinted at her. “ _You_? Do I know you?”

“No, you most definitely do not!”, asserted Donna, rather vehemently.

“But I got a flash, a vision, or something. Did the Sontarans set a spy to trail me?”

“Song-what? Do you even speak English, stranger?”

The man looked up, mouthing something, as though lost in thought. Then he mumbled, “Yeah, it sounds like English, or is the translation filter not working?”

Donna rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re on, but I suggest you move because you’re blocking my way.”

He stepped aside, allowing her to pass, and then reached into his pockets and took out a screwdriver. With her back turned, he beamed it at her, but then, as if spurred by some sixth sense, the woman turned back to face him.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Picking up some scans on my sonic”, he replied calmly, checking the readings on what looked like a toy screwdriver with blinking lights.

Before Donna could reply, he went on, his eyebrows furrowed, “That’s pretty strange. There is indeed _something_ about you. Something special.”

Donna sighed. “Look, I’m getting married tomorrow.”

“So?”

She looked at him, incredulous. “Well, if you want to flirt, you might as well learn to speak English, up your game, and search elsewhere. This is pathetic.”

The man took a step back, still engrossed in the readings. “No, I’m not flirting. It’s just that I feel like I’ve met you before, or I will meet you, soon. But it might not be the “me” that you see.”

He let out a frustrated sigh and added, “There is something. I just don’t get it.”

“Oh, so is this where you claim we were soulmates in a past life or something? Because let me tell you, I’m not a fan of the whole New Age shtick.”

And with that, she walked off, mumbling something about her weddings being “jinxed”.

“Jinxed, you say?”, he shouted after her.

Donna felt it again, that strange familiarity although there was nothing familiar about this man. The late evening sun shone on the curb, adding a faint golden tinge to the asphalt and the gasoline puddles and blurring the edges of her vision. A memory of disappearing in a shower of gold, returned to her like a long-lost gift.

She stopped in her tracks.

“Yes”, she said softly. She hadn’t spoken or thought of it, in a long time, and it felt strange to hear her own voice. “The first time I was to get married, some ten years ago, I apparently disappeared just as I was walking towards the altar. I think my family found me later and then I learned that my would-be husband was lying to me about the whole time, and he was involved in some shady business deal. Oh, and then he died. Funny, I wasn’t invited to the funeral.”

There was a tightening in her chest. Donna hadn’t expected it to hurt. “I-I can’t remember. I left the company soon after. The details are all blurred.”

“You disappeared on your wedding day?”

“Oh god, I hate how that sounded, but yes. I vanished into thin air. My mother still badgers me as to how I pulled off that trick and I haven’t the faintest clue.”

The man looked at her carefully. “And then you were somewhere else?”

“I guess?”

“You didn’t vanish. You were teleported from this plane to another.”

“Oh good. Now we’re back to speaking in Klingon.”

The man shook his head. “I think I know what happened. I’m the Doctor, by the way”,

He offered her his hand which Donna ignored. She stood beneath the amber glow of a streetlamp and pulled her arms to her chest. “If I needed to visit a therapist, I’d set up an appointment. Not talk to a random stranger on the street.”

The Doctor laughed softly. It seemed he hadn’t laughed in years, or even decades. “But I’m not just some random stranger, am I? We know each other, or at least, you _know_ me.” 

Donna looked up at him, and whispered, “But I’m positively certain, I’ve never seen you before.”

“Oh, that’s alright. Space-time can be a bit wonky. I haven’t even seen myself, yet. How do I look?”

“Like every other exceedingly unremarkable man on earth?”

The Doctor ran his fingers along his cheeks. “Hmm, not even a stubble, this time? That’s good, but I’m not from Earth.”

She laughed, a bit too loudly. “Okay space boy, here’s a tip to get your act together. If you want to abduct someone, don’t waste time chatting her up.”

“Well, I know a neat little trick to convince you.”

“So now you’re going to formally invite me to your spaceship?”

“Well…. yes.”

“Ha, caught you! I’m not moving an inch from this place. Convince me, here and now.”

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak but closed it. He pursed his lips and checked his screwdriver again and looked at her and then looked away.

“Oi, did you forget about my wedding? I haven’t got all day!”

The man cleared his throat. “I have a hypothesis but I need to be sure. But for that, you need to let me touch you.”

Donna’s eyes would’ve probably bulged out of its sockets, if the Doctor hadn’t added, “No, no, not like that. Just the tips of my fingers to your forehead.”

“Hypnosis? Are you a fortune-teller or an alien? Make up your mind.”

“I promise no harm will come to you.”

When she didn’t reply, he added, “And you’ve been waiting a long time for the answers, haven’t you?”

“I have visions”, Donna admitted sadly, “Flashes. Sensations. Memories of things that have not happened. Someone else’s dreams. And they’re gone just as suddenly. And my head starts to hurt if I think about them.”

The Doctor looked at her in the half-light. “I promise.”

Donna didn’t know if she could trust him. It was a shot in the dark, but she was willing to risk it, as though she’d done this sort of thing before. “Okay, then.”

He edged forwards, his hands cupping her face. He brushed away a stray lock of hair, and softly asked, “What is your name?”

She looked at him, slightly scared and tearful. “Donna. Donna Noble.”

He smiled. “That’s a lovely name.” His fingers touched the sides of her forehead and they both closed their eyes, involuntarily at the same time.

It hit her, all at once, like diving headfirst off a cliff, and hitting not the dusk-lit sea but the jagged rocks that bared their fangs to the sky. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t, as memories flooded her, memories of traveling across all of time and space, with a man that called himself the Doctor. She remembered now what had happened on the day of her first wedding, and the listless waiting for Spaceboy afterwards and then finally, all those glorious years of travel, watching Vesuvius erupt, being chased by aliens, and then the final thing that happened, the culmination of all the sacrifices she’d made, the Doctor regenerating and what he’d done afterwards, how she begged him to let her keep the memories even if it meant death, and how the Doctor had refused, and how it hurt, hurt so much, to remember it all, and she could feel her nerves slackening, her legs giving away, her mind crumbling and this strange man who was the Doctor but not _her_ Doctor, leaning forward to catch her and lift her up, and he was saying something, saying the same word over and over, like some kind of magic spell, and she could barely make it out through the haze of pain, until she did, and all he was saying was “I’m sorry I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry” and there was a firm hand steadying her back and another on her tear-stained cheeks, and his voice was tender but so full of pain, like her own heart.

“Donna, Donna. Hold on, you’ve got to hold on. Listen to me.”

“This…hurts.”

His voice was trembling. “Yes, that’s why he did what he did. We haven’t much time, but I’m giving you a choice now.”

Donna blinked back her tears and the flood of images. “I can’t…I can’t.”

“There’s one thing I could do. It’s not the best, but it might make things a bit better.”

“What-what is it?”

“I’ll make us both forget and I’ll make it hurt a little less.”

“And if not, do I die?”

“Within minutes.”

Through the haze of memories and pain, Donna looked upon the Doctor’s frightened and horrified face.

“I…I….”, she rasped, “I…agree…to forget.”

When Donna woke up, she was still standing with someone’s arms around her, as though she’d fallen asleep while hugging and she felt an insatiable urge to cry. So cry she did, while holding him, mourning about a life she had lived, but had to let go of, about a life among the stars and distant planets and far-flung futures and a past too primeval for historians to recall. She mourned for the best friend she had lost, who had returned to her in another form, and the loneliness that rustled in her heart like a paper bird, seemed to quieten and ease. All this time, she’d gone through her life carrying a locked box that just wouldn’t open, except now this stranger had offered her the key.

She couldn’t remember what exactly she’d seen inside that box, but she knew now that she had seen it and had still chosen to close that box, forever.

And…she could live with that.

Finally, she let go. “I know you”, she said, “But I know not from where.”

“I don’t remember it either. And perhaps that’s for the best.”

Donna wiped her tears on her sleeves. “I still have a question.”

“Yes?”

“If you’ve had the perfect past, if you’ve done everything you ever wanted to do, if you’ve lived more in a few years than in all your life, how, how do you go back to it? How do you live, looking forward to the future, knowing nothing will ever be the same again?”

The Doctor shrugged, glancing at the passing cars and the passers-by drifting past, as if in a dream. “There’s no way of knowing that for sure. The past and the future aren’t unchanging. You change the past with the way you think about it and the future with every choice you make.”

“Yes, but-”

“I’d say, don’t worry too much about it and just...be curious, I suppose.”

Donna nodded thoughtfully.

The Doctor regarded her for a moment. “You have a wedding tomorrow, don’t you? Just hang on a minute, I have a little honeymoon present for you.”

“Wait- what?”

But the Doctor had already bounded off and turned around the corner. She was about to run and follow him, when there was a tap on her shoulder. He was back and he standing, just behind her.

Donna rolled her eyes, aghast. “How on earth did you manage to do that?”

The Doctor held a finger to his lips and handed her a lottery ticket. “Thank me later.”

With that, he was about to speed off again, when she called after him, “Shall I ever see you again?”

He turned back, just once. “Maybe. Either way, you’ve got to live and find out.”

Then, after the briefest pause, he said, “And isn’t that _fantastic_?”

Donna laughed, waving at him. “Yes, yes, it is.”

She stood on the curb for a few moments, watching him walk away, before pocketing the ticket. And then with a smile on her face and a lightness in her step, she started walking in the opposite direction, towards her unknown future.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve lurked in the Doctor Who fandom for the last 4-5 years, although this is the first time, I’m uploading a fic. The prompt was “Ninth Doctor and Donna Noble meet” and I thought this might be a good chance to set right some wrongs. Donna losing all her memories, at the end of the Tenth Doctor’s arc left me devastated, and this fic was my way of giving some kind of closure to that, I guess.
> 
> Do let me know what you think (good, bad, doesn’t matter), especially if there’s anything I can do to improve my writing. I’m also on tumblr as ladyofthelake666, so feel free to shoot a message, if you want. The pandemic has been lonely enough and I’m always up for fangirling/talking!
> 
> Have a lovely day!


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